


The Defective

by Quitebrilliantindeed



Category: Xenosaga
Genre: Gen, Horror, Suicide, U-DO
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 10:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quitebrilliantindeed/pseuds/Quitebrilliantindeed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You must be "different." You cannot be "different." Pre-Series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Defective

**Author's Note:**

> Hey friends-- this fic contains some disturbing imagery, illness, and suicide, so if you have triggers, please proceed with caution.
> 
> The narrator here is a standard female-type URTV, just in case that needs to be made clear. 
> 
> Enjoy. c:

These are the first things she remembers:

A tube. Child-sized, made perfectly to fit her form.

People. A group of women and men, clothed in whites and blues.

A word. “Yes.” It was her first.

There is one more thing she can recall—or still does recall. It’s always there and she can always feel it. There is a network— a massive spiderweb of minds, twirling together and sharing their lives. There is a pool at the center, offering up it’s wealth of knowledge to all the young wells it fed into.

She hears her sisters’ thoughts at all times, day and night. What is her name…? Ah. She is 467. She has four sisters. 451. 460. 461. 466. Her memory bank tells her it was different long ago— she has eight total, with more on the way.

Half of them have died.

It’s odd. She observes her surroundings, and sees children everywhere. They are all boys. Why are there so many boys?

"They are stable." Her sisters inform her.

"Stable...?" She wonders. "And we...are not?"

She's standing at the edge of the well now, and her sisters beckon her to dive in. "Come," They say. "It's your knowledge." She dips her toes into the puddle. The words spill into her brain in torrents and downpours, sweeping away her consciousness, drowning it into a meld of collective souls. The first step is sweet-- but the water consumes her legs, and swallows her body, creeping up to her thighs--

She hates it.

_Why does she hate it?_

She screams and shrivels like a raisin, drawing herself away from the same wealth her sisters partook in with careless joy. She doesn't want this--! She doesn't want to be swallowed--!

She is "four-six-seven!" She can't become a mere thread!

"She is defective," A voice whispers. It comes from a man, six feet and then some. He towers over her, so high up that she can not make out his eyes. "Again."

Again?

Were they truly...unstable then?

She pushes the thought away.

Life goes on. They take her hands and her feet, they lead her down hallways. They steal her clothes and prick her full of wires and tubes, crucifying her form on the cold of a table or the airy tanks where she was drowned into life long ago.

This is normal.

This is her life-- it is the life of all her sisters, and all her brothers--

But her most of all.

Is it... because she is 'broken?'

One day, 466 takes her hand. 

"Where are you taking me?" She asks.

"To show you," She replies. "Because you will not let us 'share' it." Her nails dig into her palm..

It's scary-- because they look the same. But underneath the surface... they aren't. Perhaps 466 and the others are one. She and 466-- they are not.

There are tanks and scientists in this hallway-- much like her birthplace. Is it the same?

No-- it's not. These girls are older than her.

There are two girls, and one boy. They all are colored with greenish pallor and darkly-circled eyes...

One girl has no eyes of which to speak.

"They are ill," 466 says. "We," She motions to the four female-types. "Are often unstable."

"Why?" She asks in return. "There's a boy too..."

"Things go wrong," She replies stiffly. "We must value our existence, 467. We are the only girls who have not failed. Our donor is 'male,' you see? His genes have been changed too drastically--" She points to herself, and then to her comrade. "--for us to exist without problem." She pauses. "I hope we have overcome this."

She likes this idea. Perhaps she is not as 'defective' as she once thought. Or maybe 466 simply doesn't understand. Or is hiding something from her... Is this paranoia? Are these the feelings her handlers have described to her again and again?

She doesn't know the truth, and doesn't want to.

She never finds out anyway. 466 suffers acute mental distress in the U-DO simulator, leading to a full psychological breakdown.

She is shot and killed by the Institute staff members.

Their father is not pleased-- but she sense that he cares little for her sister's actual well-being.

When she asks her three (no-- two--451 has disappeared) remaining sisters, they say it was bound to happen. Perhaps to all of them-- as the 'unstable types.'

She's terrified now. Will she lose control, like 466? Or will her eyeballs fall out of her sockets and her skin turn pale and dead, like the specimens she had observed, in the hall-that-is-but-is-not-her-home? Or is she already broken, as daddy had told her long ago?

The questions are unbearable-- as unbearable as the collective mind her brothers and sisters all drunk so freely from, while she writhed and ran in horror.

Her hands tremble when her turn arrives. "U-DO" is scarier than 466-- it always was and always will be. And this "U-DO" is so fake-- it makes everything even worse. It feels hollow, like blasphemy to whatever god it is supposed to represent.

The waves brush against her mind, turning her into a weapon-- into less of a human than she even was to begin with--!

She howls with fear--!

Her turn is over before she can even comprehend what has happened. She runs away to the place where they store her and her sisters, and crumples, vomit streaming down her lips.

No.

She is not link in a chain--

She is not a cardboard cut-out of... of humanity...!

She is not a bomb, teetering on an edge, till the moment she is unleashed, murdering all before her in some rage she can not control.

She is no victim to a diseased defect crawling up inside her--!

She--!

She is--!

She picks up the gun she was given--

\--And puts the bullet in her head.


End file.
